Friday, March 26, 2010

Genesis 16, part 2

Entitlement. I am ugly about this, no lie; in fact, I manage to be both sides of ugly when it comes to this. Like, the other night, unable to put down my book and watch the wire with my husband (because, you know, God forbid I waste an evening on TV), I overhear a character explaining that she can't live on $22,500, a year. Now, that's less than a third of our combined income as a childless couple. And yet, when Z. asks if people actually live on that, I take it upon myself to school him on the number of people who really do -- like my awareness of that makes me any less a beneficiary of the system that splatters wealth "randomly" (but mostly on white Americans).

At the same time, though, I totally feel Sarai on her why-can't-God-just-give-me-a-KID, already. Whyyyy? Because I want it and everyone wants me to have it and everyone would think I was awesome and noble if I was a mom; QED, this must be God's will; QED, I gotta get on that. And what I come back to, after thinking and googling and squinting hard at the notion of slavery-versus-servitude-versus-handmaidenry, is the fact that, regardless of what Hagar is to Sarai according to their society, by verse three, here, she is chattle. Even if they were BFFs, like in some Gone with the Wind depiction of slavery, the point is, Sarai gives Hagar to Abram, so really they are not.

Now, how much of that is about Hagar being a woman, apart from her economic status, is possibly TBD after more mad googling, but when it comes to Sarai and Abram, it's clear that Hagar is a means to an end. And my understanding -- fleshed out awesomely in the second half of the chapter -- is that God does not see Hagar this way.

Before I get the catharsis of thinking of all the ways I'm like Hagar in this chapter, though, I need to look a little harder at the less-sympathetic view of Amanda, the one in which I am so much like Sarai I want a bag for my head. The biggest Sarai-error I commit -- or, at least, the fundamental one that I commit most and that most often leads to the others -- is this idea that God's will is for everyone, myself included, to look at me and think I am awsome and noble. If people would just get with the program and do things the way I mean them to, then I would be the Best Manager Ever and everyone would see how great I was. If kids would stop trying my patience, everyone would see what a loving little beacon of light I am. If I could just have a baby, already, I could be the Best Mom ever.

But God's will usually does not have to do with the world seeing me and thinking I'm an awesome manifestation of God. Since, you know, God was already manifest in Christ, and my ego aside, I have to admit that people would do well to look to Him, not me. I have mixed feelings about the notion of being a witness because, in me, I want to say: well, if I were successful, what a witness I would be. I think it's kind of part of this gospel of prosperity, Prayer or Jabez culture, which I claim (speciously, I guess) not to buy into: if I do good, I am doing God's will, so God is obligated to give me what I want. Or how can I be a witness.

Can I be mediocre at my job, only marginally successful, and be a witness? Can I be childless, when I want to be a mom, and be a witness? Can I stay in New York and sometimes look stupid and sometimes be the boss people roll their eyes at an sometimes have to raise my voice at kids, and be a witness?

I think so. I have to trust that this is so, since God has not seen fit to make me perfect and successful and an ER surgeon/missionary/mother to 12/model site coordinator. I have to think that it is probably a blessing when we fail, as much as when we succeed, given our basic tendency -- my basic tendency -- to screw up, to construct best-laid plans that dissolve when you touch them, and then to blame you for touching them. The comfort in these first, Sarai-focused versus, I think, is how God's strength ends up being made perfect in sarai's weakness. Not because she meant to do that (my favorite claim when things fail and then get pulled together by a Deus-ex-machina at the last minute). But because (still!) it's not about Sarai; it's not about me.

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